Corporate social responsibility

At Insync we believe that you don't have to leave your morality
at the door before you start work each day, which is why we choose
to make significant contributions to society and the
environment.

Commitment to the communities in which Insync operates

As a business, we benefit from the stability of our communities.
All the work we do can be regarded as a positive side effect of
being fortunate enough to operate somewhere that is stable and
safe. Accordingly, our staff and our board agree that there is a
moral imperative that demands we return something to the
community.

We are involved in many types of projects:

disaster relief

community building

issues based support and fostering entrepreneurship/capacity
building.

Disaster relief involves giving money quickly when it is most
required. Our staff builds up a kitty with weekly donations and use
it when there is a groundswell of opinion that something needs
to be done. We have given thousands of dollars over the years to
communities in need.

Community building

In April 2007 a tsunami hit the palm fringed tropical islands
around Vona Vona lagoon in the Western Province of Solomon Islands
including Kolombangara, Ghizo, Ranongga, Vella, Simbo and more.

One of those villages where a friend of our firm, Pebby
Sovutu (pictured left) lived.

Pebby had a wild youth, living and studying agriculture in
colonial PNG, growing a big afro, wearing gargantuan flares and
playing in a rock and roll band. He returned home, taught in
secondary schools, toned down the afro, rediscovered his Seventh
Day Adventist roots, and used his one salary to take care of an
entire extended family of twenty dependents. He also tighes, giving
10% of all his income, from his salary to every tenth sweet potato
in his fields to charity.

Though Pebby is a man of the Nggatokae island, the society is
matriarchal, meaning that land is owned by women, and that men go
and live in the village their wife came from. Pebby retired and
went to live in his wife's village, hoping to spread knowledge
about good farming practices that enrich, retain and nurture the
soils; replacing the slash and burn methods that worked with a
small population but would leave the island denuded of trees as the
population grew.

Taking his life savings, Pebby built a new house and established
a school in his village. Then the tsunami hit. Pebby's village was
wiped out. Ten months later he was still too proud to ask for help,
even though the village's boats had been washed away and they were
living in a makeshift shelter made of leaves in the bush.
Malnutrition and malaria were rife, and the children were not going
to school.

Moreover, the disaster was "too small" for aid agencies to get
involved in. It was just one more insignificant tragedy in a world
of sorrow.

Insync Surveys reached out to Pebby, finding out that he needed
to buy concrete stumps for termite proof housing and a water tank
to avoid water borne diseases.

Here are some of the things Insync Surveys helped Pebby provide
for his family:

Issues based support

Over the years Insync Surveys has become passionate about
particular issues and contributed to them with money, work and
personal sacrifice.

Fostering entrepreneurship

Insync Surveys donates to micro finance NGOs in 26 countries. To
date, we have helped 84 businesses get off the
ground with loans to buy income generating assets such as land,
livestock, goods for retail businesses, etc.

For example, we loaned money to Kadiatu Bah
(pictured below) in Sierra Leone. Kadiatu sells baby clothes, bags,
flasks, and rubber bowls at the market. She required a loan to buy
more baby clothes to expand her business and increase profits. This
gives her the opportunity to better support her family. The loan
was repaid over 10 months.

Commitment to health

Every year Insync Surveys sends Christmas cards to clients
purchased from a charity greeting card organisation. Part of the
proceeds from the purchase supports the The Cancer Council.

Prostate cancer has affected people we know. To develop
awareness we developed aProstate Cancer Awareness
Quizto help you learn more about the illness. Take
the test to see how much you know about prostate cancer.

Commitment to the environment

As a white collar services firm, Insync Surveys' environmental
impact is not as significant as others. Nevertheless, we are
committed to doing the right thing by the natural environment in
any way that we can.

Examples of actions we take to increase environmental
sustainability:

Offsetting the carbon from our air travel wherever
possible

Using our computers on energy saving settings

Office plants

Turning lights off

Recycling paper

Recycling toner cartridges

Recycling bottles, cans, etc

Recycling computer equipment

EMAS and ISO 14000 are the two best accepted environmental
standards in common usage. We use the principles enshrined in EMAS
(which is stronger than the ISO) to guide our approach to managing
the impacts of our actions.